I’ve always been able to sleep like a rock for 10 hours or more a night. Never waking up during the night. I’d go to sleep around 3 or 4 am and just sleep till like 1 or 2 pm no problem. I work from home on a computer and for about a year I was renting out a motel room by myself. It had a bed and a TV and I would have no problem laying in bed for hours on my phone and watching TV and just falling asleep whenever I felt like it. Horrible habit I know but sleep was not even an issue for me. I am a 36 year old male btw.

About 2 months ago I decided to rent a room out in a nice townhouse in a nice part of town. I setup a blowup bed and again I had no real problem sleeping there for about a week. Than I ended up staying up really late one night and couldn’t get much sleep. Maybe 3 hours. I got some bad shakes like my arms and legs would not stop shaking. I only had a sheet so I wonder if I was just cold. I ended up laying in bed most of the next day as well and tried sleeping but couldn’t and again got about 3 hours the next night. I ended up calling my parents and coming over because I was scared I forgot how to sleep.

I ended up sleeping really well over there and when I returned to the townhouse I am renting out I was able to sleep well there as well for the most part but sleep is on my mind a lot more than in the past. I never even thought about sleep in the past! I have had a few nights where I’ve had a hard time getting to sleep but the large majority I do sleep well and for that I am grateful for.

Here are some questions I have

Do you think the bad few nights I had shivering in bed caused all of this? Usually on my bad nights of sleep I end up shivering in bed and when I get up and try to walk it off I end up puking. What is this? Am I just getting sick and it’s why I can’t sleep well? It’s not being cold I don’t think i’m unsure what is causing the shivering. Anxiety?

Also when I am laying in bed drifting off I get these jerks. Thinking back I’ve always had these jerks. They are nothing major but I’m curious am I sleeping while getting these jerks? Like would this light sleep count towards the 8 hours people need a night?

Also what do you think about sleep hypnosis or 432 Hz music? I’ve been trying some 432 Hz music off YouTube and Michael Sealey has some nice videos up they won’t cause any harm right?

Also I can’t die from not sleeping right? I’ve been told I’ll eventually pass out which is nice to know in a weird way. I read about successful people getting 2-3 hours of sleep and still managing meetings and traveling ect ect and here I am scared because I get 2-3 hours of sleep one or two nights and call my parents to come over. Am I just being a wimp or what lol

Welcome to the forum, Healthyliving. When we suddenly experience sleep issues after sleeping well for as long as we can remember, it can be worrying. When we go through a long stretch of poor sleep it can lead to further worry and anxiety — and this can then trigger a vicious cycle of ever-increasing anxiety and ever-worse sleep.

As suggested by kobalap, you definitely didn’t exhibit good sleep hygiene in the past — but this is unlikely to be a major contributor to your current sleep issues.

As soon as we start to pay more attention to sleep, we make sleep more difficult. That’s because sleep is an involuntary process — we can’t actually control sleep. We can’t make ourselves fall asleep within a certain amount of time, and we can’t make ourselves sleep for a certain amount of time.

When we start to worry about sleep, we often do things in a bid to improve our sleep that actually make sleep more difficult (such as going to bed earlier, staying in bed longer, taking daytime naps, calling in sick to work, canceling plans with friends, etc).

The few bad nights you had shivering in bed may have triggered your current sleep issues — because all cases of insomnia start with one bad night of sleep. I have no idea why shivering is leading to vomiting — you should discuss that with your doctor.

Experiencing jerks when falling asleep are common and aren’t typically something to worry about. They could be hypnic jerks, or they could be caused by self-monitoring behavior whereby your mind keeps checking to see if you are asleep and when it notices you are, it abruptly wakes you up to tell you. You might find this forum thread helpful:

You mentioned a belief that people need eight hours of sleep each night — but this is not true and is actually a common belief that is completely inaccurate. We all need different amounts of sleep. One person may only ‘need’ six hours of sleep, while another may ‘need’ seven. There is no universal sleep requirement — so try to avoid putting any pressure or expectation on yourself to get a certain amount of sleep.

Sleep hypnosis doesn’t have much in the way of clinical evidence to support its use as a treatment option for insomnia. A far better option is CBT for insomnia (CBT-I). CBT-I is recommended as the first-line treatment option for insomnia by the National Institutes of Health, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and the British Association for Psychopharmacology.

Sleep deprivation will never reach the point of death because at a certain point your body will take over and force you to sleep. Right now, your mind (specifically, your arousal system) is overriding your body’s natural urge to sleep. Eventually, the urge to sleep becomes so strong that it overpowers your arousal system and leads to sleep. At this time, the arousal system can once again take over — and this explains why some people find they go with very little sleep for most of the week, have one or two days of great sleep, then go back to consecutive nights of poor sleep.

CBT-I techniques will help reduce the power of your arousal system and strengthen your natural propensity to sleep and this is why it’s such an effective long-term option for improving sleep.

The thing is tho I would get 10 hours of great sleep with my old terrible sleep hygiene. Watching tv playing video games in bed till 4 am and just sleeping till 2 pm the next day no problems at all while also having amazing lucid dreams where I could actually figure out I was dreaming in my dream and doing things I wouldn’t normally do because I knew I was dreaming and would have no repercussions lol I mean at one point I didn’t even have a bed I could drink a cup of coffee at 2 am to play video games till 4 am and sleep on the hard floor with just a sheet and a fan on me no problem while feeling wide awake when I went to sleep.

Now with all of my improved sleep hygiene I am getting nowhere near the sleep I used to because I am trying to make everything perfect and ideal to induce sleep. I almost feel like I should just take the not giving a damn approach I used to have lol.

I read the hypnic jerk post and that doesn’t describe mine at all. I actually enjoy feeling them. Sometimes it’s like a jolt of electricity often it’s just a jerky motion I make with my arms or legs but it’s peaceful to me knowing I am drifting off to sleep idk. I just can’t really transition from that state of mind to the really deep sleep phase like I used to.

One thing I have noticed tho is I am making a lot more money now than I used to as I work from home and my income is directly linked to how much work I do on my laptop. So waking up at 9 or 10 am instead of 2 pm is doing wonders for my productivity. Also reading about successful people like The Rock and others who say they get 3-5 hours of sleep a night and wake up at 4 am every morning ect ect is actually very calming and motivating in a weird way. I’m the type of person to try and take a negative(My new sleeping issue) and turn it into a positive(Okay so I can’t sleep 10-12 hours of deep sound sleep anymore so i’ll just be like many successful people and get by on 3 hours of sleep a night like they do!)

It’s important to note that sleep hygiene alone is not an effective treatment for insomnia. Although it’s a good idea to practice good sleep hygiene, it’s unlikely that it will address long-term sleep problems. In fact, in clinical studies, the control (or ‘no intervention’) group are usually given sleep hygiene advice!

Although I wouldn’t advocate for three hours of sleep being healthy, recognizing that we all have different sleep requirements can definitely be helpful. There is no universal amount of sleep that is suitable for everyone — you should judge whether you are getting enough sleep at night primarily upon how you feel during the day.